Bizspace Spotlight

N.C. A&T State University officials aim to soon get off the short list of University of North Carolina campuses that do not offer an MBA program.

The school’s application for its first master’s of business administration degree is due to go before the UNC system’s Educational Planning, Programs and Policies committee in June, and school officials say if approved it’s possible the program could be launched this fall, though a January start is more likely.

Currently, the only other UNC schools that do not offer an MBA degree are UNC-School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, Elizabeth City State University and UNC-Asheville. A&T is the only doctoral-granting research university in the system lacking an MBA program.

It’s still possible that permission to offer the MBA will be denied, given the number of existing programs at public, private and for-profit schools in the region. Both UNC-Greensboro and Winston-Salem State University offer MBAs, as do Wake Forest University, Elon University, High Point University and others.

But it’s past time for A&T to join them, said Quiester Craig, dean of the university’s School of Business and Economics.

“This has been something we’ve been striving for for quite a while, but it’s just now that we’re at the point of feeling optimistic that the winds are right,” he said. “We thought the right time was 30 years ago when we first applied, when we were one of the first schools in the region to get national accreditation for our business program” from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, he added.

Targeting STEM disciplines

According to an application summary submitted to UNC governors, A&T is planning a program that would be relatively small in size to start, with about 20 full-time students and five part-time students, but that would be closely integrated with the school’s science and engineering departments.

The program would be designed to facilitate a dual-degree track where students would earn both the MBA and a simultaneous master’s degree in a field related to science, technology, engineering or math, the so-called “STEM” disciplines. A&T is well-known for its engineering program in particular, which graduates the largest number of African-American engineers from the undergraduate through doctoral levels of any university in the country.

A&T’s application notes that companies such as IBM, Cisco and SAS and government agencies such as the National Science Foundation have been encouraging schools to develop science-focused business programs to help them find multitalented employees and managers.

“In order to successfully compete in the 21st century and beyond, these firms need ‘T-shaped’ employees — individuals who have a depth of scientific or technical knowledge, supplemented with a broad understanding of business and strong management/leadership skills,” the application says.

That’s true, said Bernard Milano, who is president of the New Jersey-based KPMG Foundation and also chair the Executive Advisory Council at A&T’s business school. Many students with STEM degrees from A&T now go off to other schools to add an MBA to their résumé, when they might prefer to stay.

That’s not only an issue for science students, he noted. KPMG hires graduates from A&T’s accounting program, which was the first among any historically black college in the nation to earn AACSB national accreditation. But licensure as a Certified Public Accountant now requires 150 semester hours of training, which is generally beyond the scope of a four-year undergraduate degree but could be achieved as part of a subsequent MBA.

“Right now a lot of accounting majors at A&T aren’t being hired from A&T. They’re going on to other universities and being hired from there,” Milano said. “That doesn’t help us with our recruiting, it doesn’t help the school, and it’s certainly inconvenient for students to have to disengage from A&T and move off to another institution.”

Creating more competition

Some of those students go just a few miles across town to UNCG, where Bryan School of Business and Economics Dean McRae Banks said science and engineering degree holders are able to pursue an MBA as well.

Banks said he hasn’t looked in detail at A&T’s program proposal, so he can’t say whether he supports its approval. He said there clearly is a need for better business training for science-oriented students, though that wouldn’t necessarily require a new program.

If A&T does launch an MBA, it and every school in the region will have to work that much harder to attract quality students, especially to the extent they try to recruit from within the Triad. UNCG recently worked with the Graduate Management Admissions Council to quantify how many area students scored at particular levels on the 800-point Graduate Management Admissions Test, which is required by most MBA programs.

There were only about 38 students who scored a 570 or above on the GMAT in the region during the previous 18 months, Banks said, and fewer than 50 who scored a 550 or higher.

“If you think about the programs we already have, that’s a lot of competition for a small number of students” who do well on the admissions test, he said. “If you’re injecting another program into that mix, it’s going to be even more competitive.”

Craig, the A&T dean, said there is always competition for the best students at the graduate and undergraduate levels.

“The number of programs is just one factor,” he said. “The others are, are (those programs) capable? What kind of opportunities will the students have? And what competitive advantages will they gain?”